One of my actions after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad was to find out how rich (or poor) we are. To do this I set up a simple spreadsheet which we update at the end of each month. I mentioned that I set up this spreadsheet in my blog ‘Trying to become a Rich Dad’ and got a few people asking for a copy of my spreadsheet. So I thought I’d share it will you all, so you can do the same.

You can download the spreadsheet for FREE by entering your email below:
(I note that you will also be subscribing to my awesome blog at the same time 🙂 )

Why monitor how much you have each month?

Making money is a lot about your mindset. The more you think about making or saving money, the more likely it is that you’ll take better actions to achieve this. By monitoring how much you are saving, you are materially increasing the chances that you’ll better manage your savings.

I have loved updating this spreadsheet. It’s had a really powerful impact on how we manage our money. Whether that is questioning where we are spending our money, celebrating how much we saved last month or coming up with ideas about how to grow our money.

The key pieces of information that the spreadsheet provides are:

You can use this spreadsheet to make sure you follow the ‘First Law of Gold’ from the book ‘The Richest Man in Babylon‘ and keep at least 10% of all you earn for yourself.

As mentioned above, managing your money is about your mindset more than anything else. Once you start thinking about how much you can save and how you can make that money grow, the richer you will become. Too many people just focus on how much they earn. If you are like me and start to think about saving and investing, you won’t be able to live without this spreadsheet.

How the spreadsheet works:

To update the spreadsheet you simply update the amount of money you have in your different bank and savings accounts at the end of each month. You will also need to know the amount on your credit cards, outstanding loans or investments at the end of each month too. I’ve added an instructions page in the spreadsheet to help you set it up. Whilst the download is in Microsoft Excel, you may want to upload it to google sheets. By doing this you can access it where ever you have the internet. That’s what we have done.

How does it compare to other money tracking software available?

There are many other tracking software spreadsheets out there you can use. Many are a lot more professional than this spreadsheet. I would firstly note that these other tools require a lot of updating each month which means they can be onerous to update and may lead you to lose momentum to keep them updated. Secondly, they potentially provide too much information which can lead to a lack of action. Lastly, I would note that some of them say they are ‘free’, such as mint.com, but they store your data and provide it to third parties, i.e. they sell your data. Remember that most things aren’t ‘free’. So whilst you might not be giving them money, you are giving them something else so they can earn money. I say that my spreadsheet, is ‘free’ but it will take up a small bit of you email inbox from time to time with my amazing blogs 🙂

For the many of you that have already subscribed, you should have been sent a version of the spreadsheet to download.

You can download the spreadsheet for FREE by entering your email below:
(I note that you will also be subscribing to my awesome blog at the same time 🙂 )